5 Key Considerations You Must Consider Managing A Fleet Of Vehicles
Posted by admin at 19 December 2020, at 08 : 43 AM
Are you thinking about investing in a fleet of vehicles for your business? This is a smart choice as it can be a wonderful incentive for employees who are thinking about signing up to work in your company. However, there’s a lot to think about with this option. Let’s explore some of the top considerations that you do need to keep in mind.
Your Budget
First, you do need to make sure that you are thinking about the budget that you are working with. While a fleet of cars will provide you with bragging rights for your business and in some cases could be integral to your business model, it still needs to fit into your business budget. To ensure that this is the case, you should make sure that you are shopping around and exploring different dealers. Some will be able to offer better deals on fleets than others. Similar to purchasing an individual car, it’s also worth haggling a little bit and find out exactly where the floor price is.
Going Green
When you choose vehicles for your fleet, you should definitely think about investing in green cars, trucks or vans. This is always going to be beneficial to you. Don’t forget, when you manage a fleet, you take on the fuel costs that your employees will incur on the job. As such, it does make sense to choose the most efficient vehicles possible.
For instance, if your fleet is mainly going to be operating in an urban area, then it does make sense to consider investing in EV cars. These do cost more than typical vehicles, but they are going to pay for themselves in just a few years. Don’t forget, when you take on a fleet, you are essentially leasing the vehicles. As such, you can choose to upgrade the cars whenever you like. This means that you can always guarantee that your business is using the greenest cars on the market. This is also going to help you make a great impression with your clients.
Safety First
Do be aware that if you are managing a fleet, then you will be responsible for whether or not the vehicles are safe on the road. This means that if an incident does occur and the vehicles are found to be unsafe, then you could be held liable and have to pay damages. This could also ultimately damage your business reputation to the point where it makes customers question whether they want to buy from your business.
As such, you need to think about the reasons why vehicles in your fleet could be unsafe. There are lots of possibilities to explore here. However, the first thing to do is ensure that they are being maintained the right way. For instance, if you are managing a fleet of trucks then you should invest in the services of a truck repair shop. It’s worth shopping around and exploring the different rates, but you also need to guarantee that they can provide the right quality of service.
Fleet managers may consider investing in smart GPS technology for their fleet. Fleet management devices offered by the pros at Digital Matter feature customizable maintenance alerts to assist managers in addressing vehicle wear and tear before it translates to expensive repairs, driver behavior monitoring, anti-theft remote immobilization, and more key tools to protect your employees and manage the risk the road so often poses to your fleet.
Fuel Considerations
As mentioned, when you manage a fleet, your employees are not responsible for paying for the fuel when they are on the job. You need to make sure that you have a way to handle this effectively. The best option is to use fuel cards. In doing so, employees can charge the fuel to the company account when on the clock. However, if they have access to the car in their spare time, they can also pay for it out of their own pocket. It’s a simple solution but one that does open your business up to additional costs if employees neglect their fuel cards. That’s why you might want to have vehicles with trackers too.
Insurance
Finally, when you invest in a fleet of vehicles, you should also think about setting up the right insurance. As with buying the cars or trucks in the first place, this is often just a quick case of shopping around the market to find the right option. There are lots of possibilities here to explore and you do need to think about how comprehensive you need the coverage to be. When you arrange insurance on multiple vehicles, it is a specialist request so you need to make sure that you find an insurance company that can handle this.
We hope this helps you understand some of the key considerations that you do need to keep in mind when you are managing a fleet of vehicles. If you don’t think carefully about these issues then you could definitely run into problems in the future.